Isometries, rigidity and universal covers

DOI10.4007/ANNALS.2008.168.915MaRDI QIDQ2389129zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Benson Farb, Shmuel Weinberger

Publication date 14 July 2009

Published in Annals of Mathematics. Second Series (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/math/0506544, http://annals.math.princeton.edu/annals/2008/168-3/p05.xhtml

zbMATH Keywords

Riemannian orbifoldsaspherical Riemannian manifoldsRiemannian orbibundles

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Rigidity results (53C24) Differential geometry of symmetric spaces (53C35)

Abstract: We classify all closed, aspherical Riemannian manifolds M whose universal cover has indiscrete isometry group. One sample application is the theorem that any such M with word-hyperbolic fundamental group must be isometric to a negatively curved, locally symmetric manifold. Another application is the classification of all contractible Riemannian manifolds covering both compact and (noncompact, complete) finite volume manifold. There are also applications to the Hopf Conjecture, a new proof of Kazhdan's Conjecture (Frankel's Theorem) in complex geometry, etc. Ideas in the proof come from Lie theory, the homological theory of transformation groups, harmonic maps, and large-scale geometry. An extension to the non-aspherical case is also given.

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Cited in

(14)

• Periodic flats and group actions on locally symmetric spaces
• Isometry groups with radical, and aspherical Riemannian manifolds with large symmetry. I
• The higher rank rigidity theorem for manifolds with no focal points
• The Symplectic Geometry of Cotangent Bundles from a Categorical Viewpoint
• Rigidity of convex divisible domains in flag manifolds
• Smoothly bounded domains covering compact manifolds
• Riemannian manifolds with local symmetry
• Commensurators of finitely generated nonfree Kleinian groups.
• Smith theory, \(L^2\)-cohomology, isometries of locally symmetric manifolds, and moduli spaces of curves
• Isometry groups of non-positively curved spaces: discrete subgroups
• On the work of Rodriguez Hertz on rigidity in dynamics
• The extremal symmetry of arithmetic simplicial complexes
• Milnor-Wood inequalities for products
• Rigidity of almost-isometric universal covers

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